> > The smart but poor have high critical reading and Math scores, but very low writing aptitude test scores. > I know plenty of people who share this profile

> > The smart but poor have high critical reading and Math scores, but very low writing aptitude test scores. > I know plenty of people who share this profile for reasons that have nothing to do with being poor. In my case I believe it was the "smart kid" bias. "The smart kids will figure it out for themselves. The other 30 kids in the class need more attention." With mathematics, and sciences, there is usually a way to check your answers, and it's easy for the teacher to spot the mistake and circle it. So for the smart kids, the teacher doesn't have to do any explaining, the circled mistake is usually self explanatory. Many of my written subject teachers would give A's and B's for my work. Yet, I was not, and still am not, a very good essayist. I never knew why I got B's. There was the same assumption that underlining sentences, and the occasional sentence of feedback on the would be enough for the smart kid to figure it out. I never did. Well, despite having excellent critical reading, it wasn't until a Professor sat down with me in 2nd year, and in 5 minutes explained that my essays were technically correct, but there were two problems: first, I was always losing marks for making too great a jump of reasoning, that whilst he could follow because he knew where I was going, I'd still lose marks on for not explaining the connection; and secondly, because I made lots of these jumps, to get the word count to where it needed to be, I put far too many ideas into one essay, rather than exploring all the aspects of one or two. Or in other words "quit trying to be so smart in your essays, trying to the right answer, instead write for the audience, and teach them the right answer".